The garage in California that was rented by co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin eight years ago to start Google Inc. (AP)

San Francisco, Oct. 3 (AFP): Google has said that it has bought the Silicon Valley garage where the Internet search colossus was born.

The garage came with a house, yard and outdoor hot tub where Google’s famed founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were known to soak as the nascent company took shape in late 1998.

Google would not disclose how much it paid for the property just a few miles from the company’s campus in Mountain View, California.

“We were pleased to have the opportunity to purchase the place where Larry and Sergey did early work,” Google spokesman Jon Murchinson said yesterday. “We bought it to preserve it as part of our legacy.”

Brin and Page were students working on doctorate degrees at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, when they rented the garage from Susan Wojcicki so they could begin building Google.

The pair have yet to finish their doctorate degrees at Stanford, where they crafted Google’s page-ranking formula before getting a million dollars in venture capital and setting up shop in the garage, according to the company.

Wojcicki reportedly dated a friend of Brin’s and rented out her garage to help pay her mortgage. She is now a Google vice president.

Brin and Page worked out of the garage for about five months, mostly focusing on hiring employees for their fledgling search engine firm, according to Murchinson.